As is well known, before a responsible parent of a young child can operate their motor vehicle with an infant or toddler onboard, the infant or toddler must be securely strapped into an appropriate infant car seat, this for the safety and protection of the child in a sudden stop or vehicular accident.
In the United States, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has documented that 85 percent of infant seats are installed and used incorrectly. Vehicle passenger restraint design standards have evolved over recent years, providing an operating vehicle population spanning several years equipped with varying equipment designs and capabilities in passenger and infant seat restraint devices. Governmental body requirements for automotive passenger seat belt and infant seat restraint device vary not only over recent years of vehicle manufacture, but also from sovereign country to country.
Laws require and parents understand the benefits and need for use of an infant seat with appropriately anchored infant seat restraint devices to retrain and protect a child in the event of a sudden stop or untimely motor vehicle accident. An infant seat usually needs to be installed in more than one vehicle, and is moved from vehicle to vehicle as needed. Each vehicle, depending somewhat on date of manufacture and country of registration may have varying designs of passenger restrain devices, and often no specialized infant seat restraint anchoring bolts, belts and tethers are provided with the vehicle.
In recent years in the United Stated, the NHTSA has outlined requirements to automotive vehicle manufactures and infant seat manufacturers in regard to infant seat restraint systems. The “Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children” (LATCH) system was developed to make installation of child safety seats easier by requiring child safety seats to be installed without using the vehicle's seat belt system. In the United States vehicle manufactured after 2002 are required to have standard hardware installed in the vehicle seats and all child safety seats will have two lower attachments to attach to the vehicle anchorages.
Until recent years, automotive infant seats were secured only at the base of the seat, using the vehicle seat belt. In the United States, child safety seats manufactured after Sep. 1, 1999 typically are provided with a tether strap. A tether strap is an additional belt that anchors the child safety seat top to the vehicle. A tether reduces the forward movement and tipping forward of the child safety seat in a crash or sudden de-acceleration. A tether strap can be optional or factory installed on a child safety restraint, and provides an additional restraint point at the top of the infant seat in addition to the two restraint points located at the base of the seat.
Another issue is that in recent years there has been an increasing upwards trend in the number of golf cart communities, sometimes located around resort areas as well as in newer suburban residential developments. Many developments are adding gold cart trails, which in turn increases the number of small children being transported in unsafe conditions as typical golf carts lack provisions for anchoring infant seats.
Therefore, an infant seat restraint device that is portable, that is quickly and easily installed into and removable from an automotive vehicle or other sports or recreational vehicle, that installs onto the majority of vehicle seats regardless of vehicle age and passenger restraint equipment type installed, that secures an infant seat to the vehicle passenger seat, that provide restraint mounts to accommodate current design 3 point restraint strap infant seats, that is light weight, and easy to carry, such an infant seat restraint device would be useful, beneficial to society, and novel.